Random rants about DIY projects, cooking, teaching, and vintage finds

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Monthly Archives: July 2014

July… the perfect time for all those F words. Like Fourth. And Fun. Family, Fireworks, Food. And the perfect time for a casual, laid-back celebration, even if you do it on the 7th instead of the Fourth.

Science-Viscosity fun

And art

And on to getting ready for a family get together. We found a great way to simplify the serving line. Punch a hole or two into the side of your paper plates, and tie the napkins and tableware to the plate; it saves time and space in addition to upping the cuteness factor. Speaking of cuteness.

Elle loves drawing and painting, so I thought we’d use some of her talent to decorate and learn at the same time. She said she had studied several artists at Espy Elementary, but she was not familiar with Georgia O’Keefe. We looked at her career and some of her work on the internet and decided to try to use some of her techniques for our celebration.

I always report on our failures as well as our successes. This was a success in that we learned and experienced, and Elle did beautiful work, but I had read about a technique to use under glass plates. It involved printed vintage-look tissue paper ironed between waxed paper. I had done it before using the tissue paper and thought it should transfer to the coffee filters we used to paint our flowers. If it had, it would have been a beautiful thing to put on our serving pieces, but it didn’t. I ironed and pressed, but it didn’t stick. Elle took her art work home, and, well, I didn’t quite know what to do with mine.

I’m past the stage of hanging things on the fridge. 🙂

Food

Star shaped fruit pizzas designed by Elle add to the patriotic theme, as do the “sparkler” chocolate dipped pretzels and the fresh strawberry yogurt cake.

I was able to use the flag she made and some Japanese lanterns in with the red, white, and blue garland for the deck rails. And, I was glad I didn’t have time to involve her in making that garland. I used three plastic table cloths from the Dollar Tree, cut them in half, placed one on top of the others, and then slit all three layers to within 5 inches of the top. Then I braided the strands and knotted them together. It turned out okay, but was more time consuming than it was worth. It did withstand the wind for several days, though, so I won’t totally cross that off the list.

Another thing we did was play work with balloons. We filled the red, white, and blue ones with water and froze them to use in the cooler…a festive way to keep drinks cool. The activated glow sticks under the ice made it really pretty at night.

Those were some tough balloons!

And we planned a water gun game using golf tees and ping pong balls.

SISTERS

Family

A visit from an aunt and uncle from Washington made this Fourth of July Freedom celebration a special time. We missed having Lance and Carley here, but were so glad to have the rest of the family together.

Saint manned the grill and, with Elle’s assistance, shot a few fireworks off without a visit to the ER, so, all in all, I’d say all our F words were good ones.